By Bob Bakken
MaxPreps.com
Wrestling: Injured Wrestler Continues Recovery
An injured wrestler from Hill City is making progress in his recovery from a spinal injury sustained during a meet earlier this season.
Dusty Swanson is reportedly gaining some movement in his arms as a result of rehabilitation at a Colorado hospital. Swanson separated two vertebrae in his neck during the Region 4-B tournament at Fort Pierre back in February and has been paralyzed from the chest down since then.
Swanson, a sophomore at Hill City, underwent surgery in Rapid City after the injury to fuse the vertebrae in his neck. He was then sent to Craig Hospital in Colorado, a facility that specializes in treating patients that have spinal cord and brain injuries.
Swanson’s coach Chad Ronish was quoted from Swanson’s Wikispaces web page in the Rapid City Journal newspaper as saying, “He is still weak and can’t move the arms yet, but that should come with time and therapy.”
Ronish added that Swanson is using a wheelchair controlled with his mouth, and is communicating with his teammates with a laptop computer that has a laser pointer that he wears like an earphone.
Fundraisers continue to be held to help defray expenses incurred from the injury and its treatment. $50,000 has been raised so far, not including over $70,000 raised through the television program “Oprah’s Big Give.”
Upcoming fundraisers will be held this weekend during the state AAU wrestling tournament in Rapid City and a birthday party celebration in Swanson’s honor in nearby Rockerville.
Volleyball: Templeton Commits to Creighton
Caitlin Templeton will be finishing her high school volleyball career at Rapid City Central next season. But, after that, Templeton will continue playing volleyball at Creighton University in Omaha, Neb.
Templeton signed a national letter of intent to play for the Missouri Valley Conference school. She will be the second Templeton from Rapid City playing varsity sports at an MVC school, as older brother Adam recently completed his junior season playing for the conference champion Drake Bulldogs’ basketball team.
Caitlin was a state Class AA first-team All-Stater this past season, getting 300 kills, 95 digs and 44 solo blocks. She’ll join a Creighton program that’s been on the upswing under coach Kirsten Bernthal, who inherited a team that was only 3-23 in her first season six years ago. Since then, the Bluejays have improved to a 21-10 record last fall and was one of a trio of teams that finished second in the conference race.
Track: Watertown Wins Aberdeen Invitational
Boys and girls track teams from Watertown won their respective divisions in the Al Sahli Indoor Invitational meet at the Barnett Center in Aberdeen. It was an early look at the contenders for the Eastern South Dakota Conference track titles, as all six schools took part.
The Watertown boys’ team took their team title with a 143-96 defeat of defending co-conference champion Pierre. The girls’ team victory was a bit closer, defeating Aberdeen Central 134-114.
In the process, the champion Arrows set three meet records and won eleven events.
Coach Vic Godfrey downplayed the dual team titles over the Arrows’ conference rivals.
“It’s kind of hard to get excited about the scores because nobody sets it up like it’s the ESD championship,” Godfrey told the Watertown Public Opinion. “Pierre had its stars only run a little bit and we certainly didn’t set it up the way we’ll have to in order to win.”
Watertown’s Brittany Page was the female athlete of the meet with wins in the 55, 200 and 400 meter dashes. Her 400-meter time of 1:00.2 was a new meet record.
Aaron Jung of Watertown joined Pierre’s Matt Tetzlaff as male athlete of the meet. Jung set a meet mark of 60-5 ½ in the shot put.
Watertown senior Leslie Brost equaled her all-time state record and set a new Aberdeen indoor meet mark of 13-feet in the pole vault.
Athletic Directors Named To Hall of Fame
Three athletic directors are being named to the South Dakota Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association Hall of Fame.
The induction ceremony was held during the spring Athletic Director's Conference Award Luncheon in Pierre.
Those being named to the association's hall of fame were Gary Frankenstein of Huron, Burdell Coplan of Canton and Dusty Kracht of Pierre.
Frankstein coached and was an athletic director in Howard for 30 years before coming to Huron, while Coplan and Kracht have made significant contributions at their schools in Canton and Pierre, respectively.
